I just watched this film for the first time and I have an important question:
How did Ardeth Bay learn English?
I mean, seriously, he gets reanimated, stumbles off into the shadows, and then 10 years later he's walking around in modern clothes and speaking English? How exactly did this come about?
Movie logic... either that or Mummy Magic
shareMummy magic is the most reasonable explanation I can come up with.
I just have this image in my head of him sitting around with ancient Egyptian textbooks for learning English, spending years on it, getting frustrated and shit when he does the exercises at the end of the chapter and his grammar isn't right.
Is it your contention that he could not learn English in 10 years? Do you think he is stupid? He has plenty of time to learn whatever he needs to know.
shareHow exactly would that happen?
How did he, speaking ancient Egyptian, find a teacher? Or how could he, knowing only ancient Egyptian, read an English instructional book?
I'm just trying to figure out the logistics here.
I hate to tell you this, but people have been learning other languages without instructors for millennium. My grandparents were immigrants from Sicily. They did not speak any English when they arrived. They learned by living in an English speaking community.
All Ardeth Bey had to do was listen. It wouldn't be difficult. That is how most people have learned other languages for a very long time. No teacher needed.
Perhaps you have more faith in your abilities than I have in mine, but if you air dropped me into Japan and didn't give me a teacher of any kind, and didn't allow me access to any English/Japanese learning tools, I doubt I'd be speaking much Japanese in 10 years.
I have to think that your grandparents were helped along at least a little bit by people in the community.
You would be wrong. Immersion in another culture is one of the fastest ways to learn another language. As I said, people have been learning other languages that way for thousands of years. There is certainly no rational reason while Ardeth Bey couldn't have done it. I would guess he was probably competent in just a couple of years and fluent in five or so.
I think you are underestimating your own abilities.
I speak partly from the fact that I've seen people come to the US and live here for years, actively trying to learn the language and with access to teachers, and a decade later they still commit many errors in their speech. One guy I know has been here since, I think, the 80s and he speaks three or four languages--so he is a language guy--and he still routinely makes mistakes when speaking English.
But Ardeth Bay, this mummy who was resurrected from the dead after thousands of years and knows nothing of the culture in which he's been resurrected, much less the language, and has no guidance or anyone to usher him into the world in which he has awakened, has learned to speak fluent English? Nah, I really don't buy it.
So, what? He wandered around for ten years unable to communicate with anyone? He was that stupid? No, this was supposed to be an intelligent member of the upper class. (although any member of the lower class was likely just as smart.)
I've met lots of immigrants to the US too. Most learn the language quickly and well. Some people may have an issue, of course. English speakers are just as likely to have a problem when learning some other languages, differing by the individual.
I'm sorry, but history and normal human experience doesn't support your position. People learn languages as they need to. They don't take ten years to do it. The vast majority do not have the funds to hire tutors or teachers. They pick them up on their own because most people are intelligent enough to do so.
Honestly, I have never heard anyone think it unlikely he was able to learn English.
Obviously we are not going to convince each other, so it is likely best to let this lie.
I mean... 10 years? That's enough time for one to learn a foreign language. I don't see a problem here.
shareOkay, so let's think about this:
You just got reanimated after thousands of years, and find yourself in a completely different world, and the only language you speak is ancient Egyptian.
What is the exact process you would take to learn English? Somehow find an English teacher who also happens to speak ancient Egyptian? Even if you could find such a thing, how would you locate them without being able to read or speak the native tongue?
For that matter, I have to wonder how he acquired clothes, found somewhere suitable to live, and so on without being able to communicate, which brings us back to the original question. He'd also have to learn about modern currency, hygiene, social customs and so on.
If it were in the span of six months, you'd have a point, but 10 years is a loooong time. Have you ever heard of the immersive method of learning a foreign language? That's a popular, and supposedly very effective, means of learning a language, in which you learn from a teacher who does not speak your language. Many people do this without instruction, simply by moving to a foreign land. Think of how children learn to speak.
A close friend of mine spent a year in Indonesia, and came back speaking enough Indonesian to converse with a native speaker, without ever haven taken a class. He just picked it up.
If we want to imagine what Karloff did in that decade, it probably involved a month or so of shock and confusion, followed by the realization that he'd come back to life after 4,000 years of rest, after which he begin slowly adapting to the changes in the world around him. I honestly don't think it would be as difficult as you make it out to be. And he probably did find teachers. The teacher may never have known his student's native tongue was ancient Egyptian, only that he spoke a language that the teacher couldn't identify, but again, 10 years is plenty of time to learn the language, and the customs, of a new land.
I not only have hear of the immersive method of language learning, but I've had my own experience with it. About 15 years ago I spent a couple of months in Central America and had a Spanish teacher who didn't speak much English. Ultimately I found it a frustrating experience and I can tell you that I left speaking little Spanish. Granted, I was only there two months, but I had already studied Spanish in high school before that.
You say "think of how children learn to speak," but it's been shown that adults don't have the cognitive elasticity that children have. This is why children can grow up in an environment and speak a language fluently by the time they're five years old, but adults can try to learn a foreign language and still be making mistakes years after they've begun their studies.
As for the rest of your post, I appreciate you at least trying to imagine what might have been going on in that time. I do think it would be quite difficult though. Simply surviving in the first place and not dying of hunger would be the first challenge. Also don't forget that this dude literally just wandered off into the night wrapped in bandages and shit, with no guidance, no friends, no one to feed him, no one to clothe him, no one to provide any kind of medical attention. Granted, it's "just a movie," but still, it was a bit much for me to swallow without raising some serious questions.